Legal Cannabis

The Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC) is now considering closing stores because they can’t seem to keep their shelves stocked (UPDATE: The SQDC announced that they will be closing all stores on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays until further notice). You read that right, their solution to skyrocketing demand is to close stores, not get more product to meet it

This is an industry that has reaped millions in revenues for state governments in the US, money that can be used to fix roads, invest in new infrastructure projects and do better at providing essential services. And that was just through taxing sales, not even the governments selling the product themselves.

Here, it’s a government monopoly, which is something we’re pretty good at. You won’t catch the SQDC’s parent company the Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) running out of whiskey, let alone all hard alcohol, in any of their many (much more than the SQDC) stores.

So did those tasked with setting up and running the SQDC actually think pot was a niche product only enjoyed by a handful, albeit a significant handful, of the population? Did they not realize that once the legal restrictions were lifted, it would rival alcohol sales or come close to it?

Well, maybe, but only if they were so much in their bubble that they limited their market research to data on people who didn’t mind telling a stranger that they enjoyed a product that was at the time illegal. Looking at the data from other places that legalized the plant would have been much more, um, logical.

If they weren’t completely out of touch, though, they would have anticipated that their planned rollout would not meet the demand. So, if that’s the case, either they just couldn’t get a proper operation up in time for legalization or they wanted to not be able to deliver.

If it’s the former, then, geez, c’mon guys, you had a few years to prepare for this. Does everything in this province have to operate at the efficiency of a construction project?

If it’s the latter, then why? Is it a moral thing? If so, then I’d like to point out that the Quebec Government actively promotes and profits from booze and gambling.

It can’t be that they want to help out your friendly neighbourhood dealer. If that was the case, they would have made it possible for people to apply for licenses to sell weed legally, thus eliminating by legalizing much of the so-called black market.

Could it be that they wanted legal cannabis to be difficult to get so people would seek other options and police would be able to continue to arrest and/or fine people (predominately marginalized people and people of colour) for selling what is now a legal substance also sold by the government? Nah, that’s just some wild conspiracy theory with a 90% chance of being true.

So, moving forward, the SQDC and the Quebec Government have two choices:

Open the Market

They could let people apply for licenses to sell weed and cannabis products, either through storefronts, with delivery or both. They wouldn’t have to close the SQDC, or even change it that much.

Government pot stores would be specialized the same way you can get beer and wine at every dep, but some brands only at the SAQ. The government would, of course, tax all sales.

Keep the Monopoly But Do It Right

First, make the supply overshoot the demand. I’m talking about more stores and more suppliers, in fact all the suppliers possible, provided they produce a quality product.

Then, it’s time to market. Yes, I know that marketing cannabis, or even selling t-shirts with the pot leaf on it, is now banned in Quebec, but that doesn’t help anyone. Why monopolize an industry if you don’t want it to thrive.

You’re a pot dealer now, Quebec, start acting like it! Hang photos of buds in the stores and let people smell the product…in the SAQ you can even taste-test wine. Have a points card and sell shopping bags with the pot leaf on it made of, wait for it…hemp! (You can have that idea for free, SQDC)

I do not write this as a pot smoker. In fact I don’t smoke weed. I write this instead as someone who never wants to hear a provincial politician say “How are we going to pay for that?” when an idea like free post-secondary education or a new metro line is floated.

It could be like living in a petro-state, except instead of reaping the benefits of the destruction of the planet’s climate, we’d be reaping, and hopefully redistributing, the benefits of selling a product probably less damaging to society than alcohol, which has been legal for decades.

Pot is legal here. Time for Quebec to embrace that fact rather than being embarrassed by it and embarrass us as a result. At the very least, we should acknowledge that closing stores is not how you handle too much demand.

Now, with the election of a Coalition Avenir du Québec (CAQ) government for the first time ever, it looks like things are going to change. While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have already called out new Premier François Legault a couple of times, there’s only so much he can do without risking federal over-reach, which is never a good ideal in Quebec. Plus he will soon be busy fighting to keep his own job.

It looks like the next great intergovernmental battle, at least for the next three or four years, will be the National Assembly versus Montreal City Hall. Legault versus Plante. Here’s why:

From Side-Pander to Not Necessary

Back in the day, from the late 1960s to a few weeks ago, power always shifted between Liberal (PLQ) and Parti Québécois (PQ) governments. Both parties understood that Montreal votes were important enough for them to pander to us a bit during during election campaigns but not as important as votes off-island and across the rest of Quebec, which most of their policies were crafted to deliver.

Now, the governing party has almost no representation in Quebec’s largest city. They won only two seats here, Bourget and Pointe-aux-Trembles, both on the island’s eastern extremities. Flip them to any other party and the CAQ still has a strong majority.

The Island of Montreal and surrounding area as seen on the 2018 Quebec Election map

Legault has a mandate, but he didn’t get it from Montreal. He doesn’t even have to pretend to care about what Montrealers care about, he doesn’t need us to hold power. We’ve gone from a side-pander to not needed to win.

That doesn’t mean their policies won’t affect us. In fact, the most overtly reactionary will pretty much only affect us.

Montreal needs to stand up to the CAQ and, at least on a few issues, it looks like we already are or are prepared to.

Banning Religious Symbols

Legault has promised to strictly enforce Bill C-62 which bans those providing or using government services (teaching in a school or riding the metro, for example) from doing so while wearing religious symbols. He plans to use the Notwithstanding Clause if the courts stop him.

The PLQ, who won the most seats in Montreal, are unlikely to fight against the implementation of a law they wrote and passed (sure, they probably thought they would get some votes on the right before the courts struck it down, but Legault won’t let the Canadian Charter stop him). Québec Solidaire (QS), who came in second here, may help fight this, but they only have ten seats in a Majority Government.

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, on the other hand, has said she has no problem with civil servants wearing religious symbols, including police officers. She opposed Bill 62 as a candidate and while she said she will wait and see what the CAQ plan looks like, opposing it would just make sense.

The Greater Montreal area and the Island of Montreal are the most ethnically and culturally diverse parts of Quebec. It’s also where most immigrants live. Here, a Muslim woman wearing a hijab or a Jewish man wearing a kippah is not a strange sight, it’s part of daily life. They are members of our community with the same right to provide or avail themselves of government services as the rest of us.

Of course it’s like that. Montreal is a metropolis. Cultural, religious and ethnic diversity are essential parts of being and staying a world-class city, as important as a large population and a decent public transit system.

Close to two million people live on the Island of Montreal and over four million in the Greater Montreal area. The CAQ wants us to look as white and Christian as, say, Trois-Rivières with a population under 150 000. While he claims to be a Quebec nationalist, Legault’s attitude towards Quebec’s officially designated metropolis is not only bigoted, it’s also quite, um, provincial.

If Plante does ultimately end up refusing to implement the new Quebec Government’s plan when it comes to Montreal employees and people receiving services from the city, I don’t know what Legault could do to make her. Things could get interesting.

Implementing Cannabis Legalization

When it comes to legal weed, Plante isn’t taking a wait and see approach. In Montreal, you can smoke your legal cannabis anywhere you can smoke tobacco or vape, but you can’t spark a joint near schools, on a terasse, in hospitals, on a bus, or basically anywhere you can’t smoke a cigarette.

Legault, on the other hand, is considering a province-wide ban on smoking pot in public, such as on sidewalks or in parks. Basically he’s treating it like booze, while conveniently forgetting that there are public places called bars where you can legally consume alcohol and if you bring a sandwich to a park along with a bottle of wine, it’s a picnic.

Five Montreal boroughs, all held by the opposition party Ensemble Montréal (formerly Équipe Denis Coderre), are planning similar bylaws. While it’s a really out-of-touch idea, I understand how a borough can make such a regulation, just as I understand how a city can make an opposing regulation.

What I don’t get is how a provincial government can pass what should be a municipal zoning regulation to supersede existing zoning regulations. Pot smokers aren’t criminals anymore, just people facing fines if they light up in the wrong place.

If Plante tells the Montreal Police (SPVM) not to enforce provincial ban on smoking cannabis in public, except in the boroughs where it was banned, and they listen, would Legault send in the SQ to enforce it? Could that even work?

Public Transit

And then there’s the Pink Line. A Plante campaign promise that would see a new metro line run from Montreal North through Rosemont, the Plateau, Downtown and NDG, all the way to Lachine.

As bold as that is and as pie in the sky as it may sound, Plante already got the Federal Government to sign off on investing money in it. While QS fully incorporated it into their transit proposal, Plante decided to have a photo-op during the campaign with Liberal Premier Philippe Couillard who had only said he would consider it.

It’s clear her transit plan caused her to have an unofficial ABC (Anyone But CAQ) approach during the campaign. And with good reason: Legault had said his administration would oppose the new metro line.

Plan for the proposed Montreal Metro Pink Line

So, faced with the worst possible election outcome for the future of the project, Plante adopted a go big or go home approach and announced yesterday that she was moving ahead with the Pink Line and creating a project office to study the potential impact on urban development, mobility and socio-economic needs. This office will compliment studies the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) is already doing and have a budget of $1 Million.

Basically, if project office determines that the Pink Line is feasible and shows how it can be done right, and two thirds of the money is already there, Legault, who will probably be sitting on a pile of legal cannabis sale revenues and tax money by then, will be boxed into a corner. It’s a bold strategy and one that may pay off.

Whether it does or not, prepare for a fight. Maybe a slow-moving, incredibly polite and bureaucratic one, but a fight nonetheless. A political fight on three, maybe more, fronts. Montreal versus Quebec has just begun.